Winning the game on emperor is pretty difficult, it involves a heavy expansion strategy in the BCs, under depotism expand to at least 20 cities, research as quickly as possible to get republic or democracy, then shoot for religion to build J.Bachs Cathedral. From there the game is all down hill and you can outproduce and out expand against the computer.
As for getting villages early on, I found getting a villages with barbarian hoards were vastly unproductive and damaging to my civilization, I think getting a village with a city and a unit is outranked than getting a village with barbarians. The barbarians end up destroying more than the village city and units, it perhaps would be better off not getting any villages.
However entering a village within a city's radius won't give a hoard of barbarians I found out, so that would eliminate the problem.
1) Expand to 20 cities under despotism
2) Research to and change to a republic ASAP
3) Research to and build J.Bachs Cathedral ASAP
4) Game is all downhill from there, especially after researching railroad and further expanding, building, and leaving all the AI opponents in the dust.